Days remaining in session: 16 days

Avoiding a Senate shootout: Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, wants to ban the carrying of firearms on the Senate floor, in the Senate Gallery or in the committee rooms. She's introduced a rule change for the Senate.

"With political tensions running high at both the national and state levels, we need to be sure that the Senate is a place of safety where every view can be expressed without fear of violence or gunplay," Feldman said in a news release.

She said her decision to introduce the rule change came after incidents like the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at her Arizona town-hall meeting. Congress already bans guns in the nation's Capitol.

Video of confrontation sheds little light: The Legislative Council Service on Monday released a video of a confrontation between two lawmakers in which a Democratic House member calls Republican Gov. Susana Martinez a "Mexican."

However, the security video contains no audio and reveals little about the incident last month involving Democrat Sheryl Stapleton of Albuquerque and Republican Rep. Nora Espinoza of Roswell.

The exchange appears to last about two minutes, with Stapleton standing in front of Espinoza and occasionally extending her arm. Only Stapleton's back can be seen for much of the time.

Stapleton later apologized, saying she didn't mean to offend anyone when she accused Espinoza of "carrying the Mexican's water on the fourth floor" -- a reference to Martinez.

The exchange happened during a committee meeting break.

Relief for state workers: Sen. Howie Morales, D-Silver City, is sponsoring Senate Bill 228, a measure that would repeal the extra 1.5 percent that state employees have had to pay for their retirement for the past two years. Because the state is running a surplus in this fiscal year, Morales argued in a news release, it is important that public employees get back to their former level of take-home pay.

"The teachers, firefighters, policemen and government workers do a huge amount for the state every day," he said. "It's important that we restore state employees' salaries as soon as we can, and it's a possibility this year."

Morales said measures taken to balance the budget during the recession, such as a pension swap for public employees, were successful in getting the state finances back on track.

Looking ahead: Reies Lopez Tijerina, an icon of the Chicano Movement, is slated to make a rare appearance Thursday to speak in the Capitol Rotunda at an event honoring the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The 85-year-old ailing land-grant activist and former leader of a land-grant rights group has said the U.S. government stole millions of acres from Latinos after the Mexican-American War in violation of the treaty.

In 1967, Tijerina and a band of armed followers raided the Rio Arriba County courthouse in Tierra Amarilla to attempt a citizen's arrest of then-District Attorney Alfonso Sanchez. The raiders shot and wounded a state police officer and jailer, beat a deputy and took a sheriff and reporter hostage. The hostages later escaped.

Quote of the day: "We need to find out how much, if there was fraud in this, if there was political money changing hands. Something happened somewhere to be this strange." -- Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, speaking to the Senate Rules Committee about a controversial 25-year lease at the state fairgrounds.

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